In one form of a conventional shipping and storage container, an enlarged drum is used. The drum may be, for example, a fifty-five gallon drum. Such drums have found wide usage for shipping and storing liquid or granular products. For example, such drums have been used for storing food products and for storing hazardous products.
A typical drum includes a tubular sidewall closed at one end by a bottom wall and at another end by a top wall. Such containers may have a fiber board sidewall and metal top and bottom walls, or may be made entirely of metal. Drums of fiber board are generally not suitable for carrying liquids. While metal drums are, they tend to be expensive and heavy and are not usable in the food industry unless made of stainless steel.
Such drums are classified as open head drums or tight head drums. With a tight head drum the top wall is generally permanently affixed to the sidewall. The top wall includes relatively small openings for access to the interior of the drum. Conversely, an open head drum has a cover removably received thereon. Typically, the container is filled by removing the cover.
Tight head drums can offer certain advantages in transporting the drum. For example, a device known as a "parrot beak" is often used to transport the container about in a particular location. The parrot beak device clamps about a suitably configured junction between the top wall and sidewall for lifting the drum. This can be difficult, if not impossible, to do with many open head drums, as the parrot beak would be acting on the cover. Depending on the interlocking relationship between the cover and the drum, forces resulting from use of the parrot beak might cause the cover to separate from the drum.
More recently, plastic drums have found wide acceptance. Customers often desire that the drum be a one-piece drum having an integral cover. However, such a drum is typically made by blow molding, which is a time consuming and expensive process. Also, the drums tend to be of lesser quality as there may not be uniform distribution of the plastic material
The present invention is intended to solve one or more problems discussed above in a novel and simple manner.